Today I listened to the live stream of Mac Power Users on the 5by5 Live audio stream. What a treat! David and Katie brought together a great group of listeners to talk about their workflows, and had George Starcher wrangling the guests on the show.

We (the live listeners) had fun in the chat room, too (available on the same 5by5 Live page). The show hosts were in the chat room with us, and we talked about everything from Star Trek series to Talk Nerdy To Me T-shirts.

The show was exclusively sponsored by Smile, and for those of us listening live, we had the opportunity to talk with Jean MacDonald in the chat room. She sent David and Katie gifts to open live on the air, and also kicked off a giveaway to the listeners in real time. (I’m not sure whether I got in under the wire, but since I own most of their Mac and iOS software already, I just asked for a mug to use as a conversation starter.)

If for some reason you aren’t already a Mac Power Users podcast listener yet, this would be a great starting point. Show 100 is one of the best shows in the history of this informative, entertaining, and all-around stellar podcast.

Thanks to David and Katie for 100 great episodes. I’m really looking forward to the next 100. (And since Show 100 went to around the 3 hour mark, there might be a few more out by the time I listen to the entire recorded version for this episode. =] )

Like many people, I have both a business and a personal Dropbox account[1]. Sometimes I need files from the business account while on a computer where my personal Dropbox is installed.

The obvious solution is to run two instances of Dropbox at the same time, using two different accounts simultaneously on one computer. The obvious problem is that Dropbox does not support multiple accounts.

Dropbox second instance not supported

Since I might need to respond to a client emergency at any time, it really pays to keep some key business files on all my computers. Sure, I could share folders between accounts, but my personal account is just a free 2GB account; it doesn’t have space for the set of files I need to keep handy.

I could also choose to run multiple user profiles, using a different Dropbox account with each, but that’s a pain since I would have to switch profiles all the time and double-configure some of my common apps. If I use the Dropbox website, I then have to re-upload the files manually.

All things considered, I really do need a way to run two instances of Dropbox with different accounts on one computer at the same time. So, I found a way.

Dropbox second (personal) instance synced

The key to this method came from an article on the Dropbox Wiki, which gives a pretty granular breakdown of the process. My method, implemented on a Mac[2] (see footnote for Linux and Windows), is essentially[3] a subset of that process.

Prerequisites

To follow this method you’ll need a Mac (I’m running Lion as of this writing) with Dropbox installed and set up for your first account. My first account is my business account.

Now decide where you want to actually store the folder for your additional Dropbox account. My first Dropbox folder lives in the default location in my user folder. For the additional account, I created a new folder right next to the existing one, and named it Dropbox-personal.

You’ll also need to create an Automator application and add a login item for your account. Don’t worry!—all of this is straightforward and relatively simple.

Create a custom Dropbox app with Automator

We’re going to use Automator to create a custom application for the additional Dropbox instance. This custom application can then be launched on demand, or automatically at startup.

Here’s a screenshot to show you how the application’s Run Shell Script action looks in Automator:

Automator application screenshot

Note that the commands you enter in the Shell Script action can also be run in a Terminal session for testing or troubleshooting. Most people won’t need to do this. Also, you do need that & (ampersand) character—don’t leave it off!

Should you wish to name the folder that will hold your new Dropbox folder differently, just replace “Dropbox-personal” with the name of your folder.

this should launch the setup wizard for Dropbox; go through the wizard, entering credentials for your additional account

once you are satisfied that everything is working, quit Dropbox (click the menu bar icon and select Quit Dropbox)

Save your custom application so that it can be run independently

in Automator, select File > Save

name and save somewhere that makes sense to you

My suggestion is to save your application in the folder where you created the additional Dropbox instance. This should match the value of $HOME from the bash script (e.g. Dropbox-personal in your user folder). Saving your custom app here keeps all the files for this Dropbox instance together.

You can now quit Automator.

Once you have saved your custom Dropbox application, test it by double-clicking the application file in Finder from the folder where you saved it. This should launch your new Dropbox instance again. This time you can leave it running—we’re done with all that restarting.

Automation: launch at login

If you want your custom Dropbox app to launch at login, there’s just one more step you need to take: add the custom app you created to the login items for your user account.

This is easy! Follow these steps:

Open System Preferences > Accounts

With your account selected on the left, select Login Items on the right

Click the plus button below the list of login items to add a new item

Browse to the folder where you saved your custom app, click to select it, then click Add

That’s it! Your custom app will now appear in your list of login items, and will launch automatically when you log in to your computer. Here’s a screenshot showing you how this should look.

Launch at login

Since Dropbox does not open an application GUI, there is no need to check the “Hide” option for your new login item.

Differentiate

Now that you have two Dropbox instances running on your computer, you also have two Dropbox icons in your menu bar. With default settings, it can be hard to tell them apart.

Not to worry—Dropbox offers the option to use a black and white icon. This setting is effective per instance, so all you need to do is decide which instance should have a different icon and change the setting. You can find the option under Preferences > General.

Use black and white icons for one account

Dropbox Preferences are accessed from the menu under the Dropbox menu bar icon. Check Use black and white menu bar icons.

Now that one of your Dropbox icons is black and white, it should be easy to tell them apart on the menu bar:

Different Dropbox icons

Happy Dropboxing!

[UPDATE 2012.06.14] This article was previously posted on my company website. While updating the instructions and images today, I decided to move the content here.

Note that I have personally tested this method on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and 10.7 Lion. Both worked for me with no trouble. Therefore, I have little experience troubleshooting this setup - in my experience, if you follow the directions, it just works.

[UPDATE 2012.12.26] Tested on Mountain Lion, both new install and upgrade. Some people have trouble with the second instance not running automatically after upgrading to Mountain Lion; see my comment from Dec 26, 2012 for the simple steps that worked for me.

If memory serves, this idea came to me from David Sparks via the excellent Mac Power Users podcast with Katie Floyd. David talked about using two accounts so that he could share relevant files between his PC at work and his Mac at home without exposing everything in his personal Dropbox account. Even with the available selective sync feature in Dropbox, using a separate account still feels more secure. ↩

One seemingly minor change from the instructions on the Dropbox Wiki gave me a tremendous usability improvement. The instructions on the wiki suggest using $HOME/.dropbox-alt as the home path when setting up the additional instance. By default, Finder does not display files or folders that start with a period, which means .dropbox-alt is not a visible folder. By using $HOME/Dropbox-personal instead, you can see and browse the additional Dropbox folder, and even add the Dropbox-personal folder to your Finder sidebar. ↩

After hosting my own WordPress blog for a while, I realized recently that I had not posted for almost a year. Oh, I’ve been writing—-to my customers, associates, friends, family… even drafts of blog posts. The problem is that I haven’t been publishing those drafts.

No, that’s not right; not publishing is the symptom, not the problem. The real problem, I thought, was that I didn’t know where to post new content.

I had a blog on my company website, where I published a few how-to articles based on customer experiences or my own interests. These were good articles, exemplifying the work I enjoy: consulting to guide people in their use of technology. Still, I didn’t do much publishing there either, and that blog has also languished.

My recent realization was that I wanted to post most of my content on my individual website—-on this domain, theterran.com—-but did not, because I couldn’t stand the site.

Don’t take that wrong; WordPress is a solid content management system used widely and to great effect. It wasn’t WordPress that I didn’t like, it was the design of my website.

I’m an infrastructure guy, not a designer. I can architect great solutions to technology problems, but putting on a nice interface requires the work of someone with design chops. My strengths lie elsewhere.

While I had looked at hosted platforms (including Squarespace) before, I never seriously considered a switch because I run my own web server and thought I should host my own blog.

Well, I’ve finally gotten over that. My challenge is the design, not the hosting. I need to remove that barrier and get on with writing and publishing.

Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about Squarespace from podcasters on the 5by5 network. The timing was right. I gave it another look, and decided to make the jump.

Squarespace gives me a nice-looking website right out of the box, great tools for managing it, and really easy-to-use layout options. This way I can have a site that doesn’t keep me away, one where I actually want to post new content.

If this goes well, I can always work with a designer later to improve the look of the site even further.